Shuto Katsuragi
Shuto Katsuragi (首藤葛城, Katsuragi Shutou) was an aspiring hero, who one day, went through certain events that made him accidentally join the evil organization Jackal, and became the villain, Ratman. Shuto is the son of Nozomi Katsuragi, and the older brother the twins Ana Katsuragi and Yuna Katsuragi. Appearance Shuto has brown hair and wears the standard school uniform. Shuto is short for his age, as he is a little less than five feet. He also has a very large scar on his back, though he has no memory of where he got it. Personality He is a bit rash when he sees someone in need. Such as when Mirea was in "danger", he readily accepted a contract to be able to save her despite noticing how suspicious this was, as well as jumping into the middle of a busy street to save a cat without thinking. He used to believe that all Heroes were just like Shiningman, but after becoming Ratman he starts to see another side of the Association, such as how Ankaiser merely sees being a Hero as a job. So despite his initial dislike of being tricked into joining Jackal, he notes that he can still be a hero. Overall, he has two things that tick him off: people who make fun of his height, and people who fake being a hero. History Ever since he was saved by Shiningman, Shuto strived greatly to one day be a hero just like him. However, he also believes that his height will greatly diminish his chance of ever receiving a Hero's License. To deal with this, he usually drinks lots of milk a day, but has yet shown any results. Plot ]] Becoming Ratman Shuto is remembering the time when he met Shiningman; and saying Shiningman's chant, while getting ready for school. His sisters Ana and Yuna catch him and Ana starts making fun of him. He argues with Ana for a bit while Yuna watched until their mother yelled at them to get to school. Shuto arrives at school and in class greets his best friend, Kanta Matsui. Kanta shows Shuto a picture of him with Randolman, a hero, whom he met the day before. Shuto and Kanta start talking to their friend about heroes, but get annoyed when she repeatedly and purposely kept getting Randolman's name wrong. Mirea Mizushima shows up to class, and while most of the others either ignored her or talked about her, he goes up and talks to her. She returns the book that he let her borrow. Mirea tells him that she liked a certain chapter of the book and Shuto goes on about heroes and justice etc. He later left the room with Kanta and as they walked down to the restroom Kanta asked him if he was close to Mirea due to him seeing Shuto and Mirea exchange in the classroom. Shuto answers and tells him he just lent her a book. Continuing the conversation in the restroom, Kanta tells him how unapproachable Mirea is to everyone else. Shuto says he didn't notice that. Shuto and Kanta almost forget that gym class is next, so they go change. In gym class, Shuto tries to challenge Nagasawa, the girls' favorite, in basketball. Nagasawa tells Shuto that he should up on becoming a hero because he'd be the World's Shortest Hero, and scores a basket against Shuto. He tells Shuto to know his place, and calls him Shorty. This leads to a fight between the two that the gym teacher had to brake up. On his way to the Nurse's office he is accompanied by Mirea. When he asks why she is walking with him, she says that she is on the Student Health Committee. When Mirea asks what Nagasawa said, Shuto says he'll never tolerate anyone who makes fun of his height. He proceeds to talk about his shortness and how he tries to change it. Mirea then tell him that she truely believes that he will definitely become a superhero. Hearing this causes his heart to beat and made him blush. He then starts to get nervous and made an excuse to her to get away and think. He ends up somewhere on the schoolgrounds where two delinquents were smoking but did not notice them. He remeniced about what he talked with Mirea, his resolve to be a hero, then fantasized about what kind of hero he wants to be, with his future person being called Super Nova; he does this while unknowingly being watched by the delinquents. He then proceeds to enact his fighting moves whitched caused his indoorshoe to fly-off and land on one of the delinquent's pompadour. The delinquent got angry and before he beats up Shuto a girl fell from the sky and does a Frankensteiner to the delinquent and knocking him out to Shuto's amazement. Shuto watched as the other delinquent recognized her as "Rio Kizaki from class 2-A! The only daughter of the president of the Hero's Association and a huge Wrestling fan!" Shuto then watch as Rio lists what wrongs they did before preceeding to beat-up the delinquent. Afterwards Shuto talked with Rio for awhile until Rio's Hero Tracker activated, telling her there something is happening at the bus stop. As she left, Shuto thinks to himself that she is amazing but then begins to selfdepreciate due to being saved by a girl. He then says aloud to himself that it may be impossible to be a hero afterall; unbeknownst to him Mirea was in earshot. Later around 3:28, Shuto was invited by his friends to go to the arcade but he refused by saying that he is going straight home. On his way home, while feeling sorry for himself and thinking about watching his Super Mask DVDs when he gets home, he spots a skeleton masked man spying on him from an alley. The masked man then disappeared from the corner, causing Shuto to rub his eyes in disbelief but when he looked again he sees two peeking from the corner. Coming to the conclusion that they are evil, he runs to the alley to confront them but then sees three of them feeding cats and freezes in his tracks. Shuto watches as one pulls out a cellphone and them trying not to answer it until the one who pulled it out just pressed ignore. Shuto then concluded that they are not evil afterall and decided to go home. As he was on his way, they jumped him from behind, taped his mouth, tie him up, and stuffed him in a sack. After a few minutes of being draged around in the sack, two of the skeletal costumed goons (now wearing Christmas costumes over their uniforms) opened it up in front of their commanders, one is an old man and another a beautiful woman. The woman welcomes Shuto and announces that they are the secret society Jackal. Shuto was amazed that an evil orginization actually exists, then he saw Mirea hanging from chains. He tried to say something to them but the tape prevented him. The woman then ordered the goon to take the tape off which he did. Shuto, now able to speak, asked them why they kidnapped Mirea and himself and what are their motives. The woman just tells him that they are just doing it because they are villains. She then tells him that the orginization is using them as bait "to lure out the hero here." The woman and the old man then commented that heroes love children. Out of nowhere a man wearing a shirt saying "I'm HERO" arrived at the scene, he then said a corny phrase saying that he fell into a trap. He then cornily tells Shuto to not worry but gets wacked in the face by a goon with a bat. The "hero" comments that it was unfair ambushing him and decides to transform but was interupted by the goons beating him up; Shuto mentally comments that the "hero" was a pushover. The woman vocally exspress her disappointment and ordered a goon to open-up the floor under Mirea which reveiled a container filled with some sort of bubbling liquid. Upon the woman saying "Showtime," Mirea then is lowered to the liquid container; Shuto is yelling to the orginization to stop it. ]] The "hero" untied Shuto then asked him if he wanted to save the girl and handed him a watch. The woman identifies it and dramatically exclaimed that the watch was a transformation device that can turn people into a hero called APPEND GEAR. Shuto thought to himself on what they said of the watch and what Shiningman told long ago; the woman orders the goons to take the watch. As Shuto puts it on the "hero" tells him he has to sign a contract first. With Mirea's life in danger, Shuto decided that there was no time to be suspicious and signed the contract and transformed; the Jackal Society watch him transform. Comments to himself how it feels to transform, he then looks to Mirea and that "he'll be right there," and rushingly jumps to her and frees her of the chains. As Shuto lands carrying Mirea, she opens her eyes and tells him that he finally became a hero. Shuto was confused on what she said. Mirea points towards Jackal, when Shuto looks the society welcomes him again but this time in a more friendly way with party favors; this made his jawdrop in-suit. They gave him a glass of alchoholic drink, he thanks them but pedels back saying he's still a highschool student and can't drink, the woman said "Now don't be silly!! We're an evil orginization afterall!!" Shuto got held up on her saying "We," and asked if they're mixed up since Jackel was the villains and he was the hero...right? The old man laughingly questioned Shuto if he really was a hero and showed him his reflection. Shuto was shocked at what he saw, more than how his body changed, it bugged him that his suit makes him look like a monster. The woman told him that he will now lead Jackal's troops, Mirea stands by Jackal as the woman talks. The woman identifies herself as the leader of Jackal, Crea Mizushima, and thanks Shuto for taking care of her little sister at school. He was surprised at her claim but after a careful look he notices that they do have a resemblence to each other. Shuto drops to his knees thinking to himself that he's been had, Crea abrupts his thoughts telling him sice he signed a contract he can't ressist; the "hero" holds up the contract and reveils himself as one of the skeletal goons. Crea then tells Shuto that she is looking forward to working with him calling him "Test subject #1 Ratman!" First Crime Arc The next day, during math class, Shuto mentally comments that the same old same old should be like this everyday, but then remembers what happened yesterday: finding out that Mirea is part of an evil orginization, him (unwillingly) joining the orginization, and Crea calling him Ratman. He then gets depressed in thinking that he is straying from his path in being a hero. He then recalls his upperclassman Rio and how heroic she was and wonders what she would think of his situation. Depressed, he looks out the window and sees the Jackies, the skeletal costumed henchmen of Jackal. He mouthes to them to go away, they respond by doing a dissappearing thumb trick. He angrily yells that he did not know what it means disrupting the class, the teacher makes him stand in the hallway holding two buckets. While angrily thinking on what the Jackies are doing at school they pop up right next to him, tieing and gaging him, and carried him away. Later at Jackal's base, Gengo Mizushima, the old man, laughingly thanked Shuto for yesterday and asked him how his body is doing. Shuto answeared "nothing special," Crea types it down as no side-effect and that he's adapting. Shuto then asked them why they chose him to be Ratman, Crea answers him the reason is because he is short and no one would connect the big Ratman with a shorty. Gengo then added that they also needed a test subject, Shuto disheartenly drops to his knees exasperated at his explanation; Crea gives a wily smile as she looks over to Mirea who in turn looks away sheepishly while holding a cat. Shuto protests that he does not want to be Ratman but Crea ignors him and tells him that today is Ratman's first mission. She tells him it is to infiltrate the data center of the Hero Association's Headquarters, the Kizaki Estate, and steal the personal information of every hero license holder along with every single file on all the businesses registered with the Association. After hearing her out, Shuto tried to protest again but Crea cuts him off to reminded him of his contract and lists the articles to make him obey. He begrugedly concedes to it, Crea cracks her whip to the ground and tells him to have a better attitude, he gives her a nevous afirmation. Before he left he asked her if it's a bit unreasonable, her response is that she could consider relieving the contract if the mission was a sucess. On his way to Kizaki manor, as Ratman hopping from the rooftops, he notes how incredible Ratman's power is. When he gets there he wonders how is he supposed to sneek in considering it may have state-of-the-art security. He then sees the Jackies try to jump the wall but they failed when the dogs started barking. When he and the Jackies were finally in they got lost trying to go to the data center but they ended up in the bathroom. Suddenly the door opens revealing a naked Rio much to his surprise. He embarrisingly looked away claiming that he did not see anything, but Rio kicks him away. She berates them asking them whether they are intruders because to her she sees them as perverts. Just as she was asking them the Jackies were playing with her underware, she responded with a scream causing Shuto as Ratman to runaway. As he ran through the hallway, he curses his predicament and wonders if Rio will hate him. He then ran into the maid and a trainer who proceeded to fight him. After the man unleashed a combo onto him, Shuto decided to escape them by jumping through a window. When he finaly gets to the data center he realised that he does not know how to retrieve the files due to not being good with computers. One Jacky comes up to him and assures him that he will take care of it. As Ratman watches the Jacky work on the computer, he is attacked from behind by hero. As the hero made an introduction and talked a bit, Ratman identified him as ANKaiser and asked him for an autograph. ANKaiser gave him a dumbfounded look, Shuto misunderstood it as being too soon to ask for an autograph and asked for a handsake insteed holding out his hand. Ankaiser responded by slaming him onto his back, it then dawned unto Shuto that he is in a situation. ANKaiser then mounts Ratman and smacks him while berating him on what he thinks are tricks, this caused Shuto to remember that he is an intruder. Later, Ratman and the Jacky are in a seiza positon in front of ANKaiser, Shuto mentally appologizes to Crea for getting caught. ANKaiser berates them for trying to challenge the Hero Association before interogating them if the have more accomplices. This caused Shuto to wounder where the other Jackies went. ANKaiser asks if they were trying to steal the personal information with the memory stick he confiscated. The Jacky nods to answer him and Shuto mentally questioned if it was ok to answer. After listening to ANKaiser talk about how he is getting a bonus, Shuto is taken aback seeing ANKaiser acting different from what he thought he was and said it to his face. ANKaiser tells Ratman he did not care and says became a hero for the praise and it was just a job. Upon hearing this, he angrily asks ANKaiser to stop calling himself a hero. ANKaiser questioned what Ratman said before being pushed aganist the wall by him. ANKaiser then grabed Ratman by the scarf and mistakenly guessed that Ratman was doing the crime because he failed the hero licensing test. The statement caused Shuto to get angry enough to partially go beserk and revealing his teeth with his mouth agape, scareing ANKaiser and Rio who just walked in. Rio screamed and caused Shuto to come to his senses and look in her direction. A frightened Rio mumbles, pondering on what type of monster Ratman could be before throwing miscellanious religious objects at him and saying their coresponding words associated with them. Then the Jacky threw a smoke grenade which allowed both him and Ratman to escape after the virus he uploaded finished leaking the data of the computer to the internet. After escaping and returning to base, Shuto was tired a fell asleep on Jackal's couch and was later brought to Mirea's room to rest on her bed. He later wakes up to the sight of Mirea's legs and her asking if he's awake. Shuto asked her where they were and she answered him. He then asks her "What does 'hero' really mean?", questioning whether or not he is one, and asking if she only sees heroes as a guy possesing super powers. Mirea answers with a quote from the book she borrowed from him earlier and says he has a stong will. Shuto's stomach began to growl, Mirea tell him that she will make something for him and he thanks her as she walks away. After First Crime The next day while walking to school, Shuto reflected on what happened yesterday noteing that the incident did not make the new but now has to be cautious now the cops and heroes would be after him now. Mirea walks up to greet him and asks if he was alright due to going home late. He tells her that he told his parents that he was at a game center and was scolded. He then remembered to thank her for the food yesterday, saying it was yummy unkowingly causing her to blush. Hero Awards Arc After Hero Awards Threat of S Arc Unchain Arc Rematch After the news of the ANK security firm going bankrupt and its president being arrested for tax evasion, Shuto learns that Ankaiser may lose his license as an A-Rank Hero. While visiting the hospital due to Fatman overeating his girlfriend's food, Shuto overhears a conversation between Ankaiser and his mother and discovers the reason why the egotistical hero wants to get as much glory as he can. It is not solely because of gaining more fame, but also to raise his status and benefits to pay for his mother's hospital bills. Shuto begins to feel sorry for him, but Crea recommends that he does not play the hero in this case as the results may have unintended consequences. However during a press conference in which ANKaiser is interviewed prior to his retirement, he pubically issues a challenge to Ratman for a rematch. Shuto decides to accept the challenge. He waits until after the press conference to set up the rematch in an underground parking lot. Though his fighting skills had improved since they last saw each other, Ratman was still at a disadvantage against Ankaiser without reverting to his Animalistic State. He was nearly defeated after being hit by Ankaiser's Dragon Cannon, but stood back up and told his foe to take back what he said about 'heroism being already dead' should Ratman win. In a final clash, he surprises Ankaiser by blocking his Counter-Attack and knocking him out before passing out from exhaustion. Afterwards, Shuto learns that Ankaiser will continue on as a hero for the One-Way-Gym, (now renamed the Kaiser Gym), though he will have to start over as a D-Rank. Hero Booster Arc Shuto suddenly collapses in gym class while clutching at his chest. While recovering in the nurse's office with Mirea, a new S-Rank hero appears and confronts Heavenly Maiden in her civilian identity. Later on, the same mysterious S-Rank hero's popularity soars as he performs many feats of herosim and crimefighting. Meanwhile, Fatman is upgraded to D-Rank while Mr. Big Horn actually makes C-Rank. However, this proves to be quite disasterous as Mr. Big Horn and other lower-ranking heroes get a hold of a mysterious program called the Hero Booster, which not only increases their powers but also makes them go berserk. Ratman and Fatman team up, which allow them to defeat the empowered Mr. Big Horn and return him back to normal. Ratman comes across the Hero Booster program, which almost affects him, but Shuto is able to shake off its effects. Abilities Shuto fights by using his Append Gear to transform into Ratman. As Ratman. Shuto has enhanced physical strength, jumping ability, flexibility, speed, and durability. The Ratman Suit page has a rundown of all his current superpowers. Shuto has also taken up physical training to build up his body and boxing lessons to improve on his fighting skills. *'S Gene' Due to his meeting with Shiningman with confirmation from Kreios, Shuto possesses the S-Gene which not only allows him to transform into Ratman using the Append Gear, but also gives him a hidden, untapped potential in which he is just starting to realize. So far, he is able to perform Shiningman's Killer Move, the Shining Ray. What further abilities this grants him has yet to be revealed. By Chapter 41, Shuto collapses during gym period, clutching at his chest. This may be indicative of the side-effects or strain of using the S Gene. Relationships Shiningman A hero that first inspired Shuto to being a hero when he was saved by him in a collapsed building. He sees Shiningman as the epitome of how a hero should be. Mirea Unlike the other members in their class, Shuto talks to Mirea. They consider each other as friends. Mirea has a crush on Shuto that he is oblivious of. Rio Shuto and Rio respect each other for their shared aspirations to become heroes. They became friends after Rio saved Shuto from a group of thugs. Ana and Yuna Despite the fact his sisters annoy him sometimes he deeply cares about them. As seen when he rescued them from Drug Dealers Shuto stated if they did harm them he probably would have killed the thugs. Ankaiser At first, he greatly looked up to Ankaiser. That was until his first meeting with him as Ratman, where his arrogance to both his fans; referring to being a Hero as simply a job and laughing at Rio's desire to be a hero. Shuto refused to acknowledge Ankaiser as a hero anymore. As time went on, he develops some pity for him after learning about the situation with Ankaiser's mother and leaves him with some satisfaction after their rematch. Shiki Kazamori A new friend of Shuto's after he saved his life from an accident. He sees how Shiki uses his powers and refers to him as a hero. Like Mirea, Shuto appears to be oblivious on how "close" Shiki likes to be around him. Trivia Category:Characters Category:Male Characters Category:Jackal Members Category:Katsuragi Family